


Bungalow

by The Manwell (Manniness)



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Charitable Works, Duo has a thing for fixing up old houses, Duo is good at DENIAL, Get together fic, Home Improvement, Home construction, M/M, Not prepared for the sexy, Post-Series, Preventers, Smut happens anyway, Trowa POV, Trowa has a thing for Duo, Trowa is good at being misunderstood, Twenty-Somethings, Unfinished houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 11:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10966620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manniness/pseuds/The%20Manwell
Summary: “A bungalow this time,” I observe.  Usually, the houses Duo renovates out of his own pocket are a minimum of three bedrooms.“Yeah.  This one spoke to me.”“Did it talk dirty?”





	Bungalow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClaraxBarton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/gifts), [Kangofu_CB](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/gifts), [Talliya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talliya/gifts).



> This fic is for ClaraxBarton, who once upon a time mentioned liking snappy 2x3 dialog (and I am so happy you shared the ending of "The First Five Times" with us, my dear!!)
> 
> This fic is for Kangofu_CB, who mentioned something about sock-stripping not being sexy (but the socks were PRICELESS in "Gin and Tonic") so... what do you think now? (^_~)
> 
> This fic is for Talliya in homage of her massive "Fix-It Verse" undertaking (WHICH I AM IN LOVE WITH)

 

It’s hell working with the love of your sad, sorry life.  Especially when the love of your sad, sorry life has no idea you think of him that way.

So I guess I’m the only one to blame for my misery.

Misery and I are practically roommates.

“Tro, man.  What’s the deal?”

I snap back to the present.  Accept the sheaf of papers.  Staple randomly.  “Just thinking.”

“What about?” he asks, saying nothing as I slap the documents onto the slowly — very slowly — growing pile.  Of all days for the copier to run out of staples.  Why do we even live in a world that still requires staples?  What the hell is wrong with sending an attachment to the email accounts of everyone who’s going to be at the meeting and letting them read the mission report on their cell phones or tablets?  Because almost everyone would rather be reading porn.  Or watching cat videos.  That’s why.  That’s the kind of world we live in.

“Roommates,” I bite out, forcing myself to shuffle the growing stack into an orderly tower.  I damn Heero and Wufei.  They’d gotten the glory of the arrest; Duo and I had gotten copier duty.

“Yeah?  You thinking of sharing your place?”

I chuckle, dry and droll.  My apartment is the size of a shoe box.  A goldfish would mutiny.  “No.”

“Ah,” Duo breathes, handing me another sheaf of papers to staple.  Why do we only have one stapler between us?  This is not a teamwork building exercise.  And even if it were, Duo and I wouldn’t need it.  Really, the Preventers budget for office logistics is ridiculous.  But it had allowed for the vests that had saved both Duo and myself from armor-piercing rounds during Tuesday’s Mexican stand-off that had turned into a trigger-happy, flaming free-for-all.  So I don’t complain.  Not this time.

“So you’re thinking about moving out, yeah?”

What are we talking about?  Oh.  Roommates.  Right.

“I got a room,” he volunteers.  “You want it?”

“Do you come with it?”

He laughs.  Like he always laughs when I tell him exactly what I think, exactly what I mean, exactly what I want.

He bumps my elbow.

My arm tingles.

I frown.

“Cheer up, my bro,” Duo charmingly orders.  “After they cut us down from the rack, what d’you say we get some takeout and head over to my place.”

I don’t say no.  I don’t say anything, actually, because the last set of copies is spat out and we’re already five minutes late for the meeting.

Not even a discreet viewing of porn could make this bearable.

I ask myself why I still bother to come to work.

I glance at Duo.  He scowls at the tip of his pen, pulling it so close to his nose he goes cross-eyed.  I grunt back a laugh.  He winks.

“Agent Barton?”  Special Operations Leader Quatre Raberba Winner kindly invites, “Do you have something to add?”

“Yes.”  And subtract, depending on your point of view.  I grab Duo’s pen.  “Got it.  Please continue.”

Duo smirks.  He’s still smirking when we pull over in front of his latest fixer-upper.

Duo has a compulsive need to buy derelict houses at ridiculously low rates, fix them up, and then donate them to a charity that assigns homes to families in need.  He resides in his current work-in-progress until it’s done and then he drops it like a hot potato, moving on to the next without a backward glance.

Four months of back-breaking, knuckle-scraping, head-aching work all for the sake of giving some luckless little boy his own room so he won’t have to share with his sisters.  Only Duo would do something like this.  He’s so selfless I could puke.  My miserly soul never had a chance of resisting him.

But right now he’s leaning back against the side of his asthmatic pickup truck and smirking his pert ass off.

That smirk.  Yes, I could do a lot with that.  Someday.  Please.

The ass, too.

I check my watch.  “Ten minutes.”

“Til what?” he wants to know.

“Your bragging rights run out.”

He leaps up the busted front steps to the door.  I hear the rattle of keys and the soft suction of a new and well-sealed door opening.  Balancing the takeout bags, I haul myself onto the porch and over the threshold.

The foyer is a sand-blasted mess.  The living room looks like a Good Behavior common room in Alcatraz.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Frankenstein’s monster had had a temper tantrum in the kitchen.

Duo leads me down the hall, crinkling the plastic sheeting underfoot.

I’m prepared to be underwhelmed when I poke my head in the bathroom, but it is a study in simple lines of perfection.

“Gotta prioritize,” Duo informs me, still smirking.

I smirk back, imagining Duo’s nights spent on an air mattress in here, the only habitable room.  “How often did you wake up kissing the toilet?”

He rolls his eyes.  “Thanks for the visual, buddy.  My life is so much more complete now.  And here’s the first bedroom.  You can have this one if you want.  I haven’t started on the other one yet, so if you hate it, it’s cool.  Blank slate over there and all.”  He gestures to the door at the other end of the hall.

This bedroom, though, is incredible.  Greens and blues and plush carpet.  Dark, light-blocking curtains on the window.  A ceiling fan just begging for articles of haphazardly tossed clothing.  A pair of floor lamps to knock over during a drunken, amorous stumble.  I want to peel my hated, post-mission Meeting Day suit off and never leave.

“A bungalow this time,” I observe.  Usually, the houses he renovates out of his own pocket are a minimum of three bedrooms.

“Yeah.  This one spoke to me.”

“Did it talk dirty?”

“You know it!”  He’s grinning now — a regular grin — as he shakes his head at me, arms akimbo.  “Heh.  Never ceases to amaze me.”  In response to my quirked eyebrow, he elaborates, “You never look at me like I’m some kind of escaped mental patient.”

I consider that.  Instead of considering sponge baths, I drawl, “Well… if you’d told me it had sexted you, I’d be concerned.”  I lift my hands and mime as I point out solemnly, “Houses don’t have opposable thumbs.”

Duo laughs.  Again.

It’s addictive.

I make no apologies.

“So, what’s the verdict?” he asks after we’ve demolished the takeout… while standing upright at the kitchen counter with our shoes coated in drywall dust and our shirtsleeves rolled up to our elbows.  “You gonna take me up on it?”

Damn him and his double entendres.  But his name __is__  “Duo,” after all.  I should have seen this coming.

Oh, damn.  Now I’m doing it.  To myself.

I mumble, “You just want a hapless victim to foist this pile on.”

“Foist.  Seriously?  You actually use that word?”

“I just did.”

“Yeah.  I noticed.”  His sidelong look finds me through his bangs and mine.  “But… there’s a good chance this one is a keeper.”

Resist temptation.  Yes, just like that.  Good boy.  “And give up your thing for broken down houses?”

He shrugs.  “For the right one.  What about you, man?”

“I’m not into the ‘shingle’ life.”

“Fuck, that was awful.  No, Mister Punny Guy, what’s your thing?”

I stop leaning against the battered kitchen counter top and investigate the window over the sink.  The view is shit: a pair of battered, metal garbage cans and the neighbor’s weathered privacy fence.  I love it.

Duo persists, “We’ve been working together just about daily since Une dragged us into her special ops team.  Y’know, once we hit the magic number—”

“Twenty is considered the age of adulthood in many cultures.”

“—and I still don’t know what the hell your thing is.  I mean, do you even have a—”

“Who.”

“—hobby or… say what?”

“Who my ‘thing’ is.”

Duo pauses.  Examines me very carefully.  I thumb the caulking around the window.  Professional job.  Nice.

“I hear ‘junior’ is almost as popular as ‘mighty mouse.’”

Junior is—?  Oh, fuck.  I throw my head back and laugh.  Only Duo could stand less than an arm’s length away speculating about penis pet names __and__  manage to make me laugh.  Only Duo.

“Don’t call him names,” I defend, struggling for a severe look.

“Sorry.  Sorry.”

He’s not, though.  What he is is unrepentant and pure sexy.  He slouches.  I drum my fingers against the edge of the counter.

“Him, huh?” Duo finally asks.  Finally.

F I N A L L Y.

“Is that an issue?”

He turns around and leans back, arms and ankles crossed.  “Pot, meet kettle.”

I scan his profile until he tilts his head my way with a forlorn smile.  Ah, hah.  I see.  We have so much in common.  “You ever going to say anything to your…?”

“Hah!  Are you kidding?  I’m gonna deny-deny-deny until my balls fall off.”

Now there’s an image I do not need.  Ever.  I wince.

I offer, “Tell me yours; I’ll tell you mine.”

“No way, pal.”

“Then no deal.”

“Huh?”

“I refuse to share a house with someone who might have a thing for the same ‘who’ as me.”

I hold my breath.

If Duo grimaces, the odds are good that he’s imagining the awkward breakfast tableau of a Morning After: Roommate A enters the kitchen to find Roommate B and Object of Shared Affection C drinking coffee barefoot.

Yes, if Duo grimaces, I’ll know that Roommate B’s chances are slim at best.

But if he doesn’t…

His jaw clenches.  He swallows.  His fingers curl into claws around his biceps.  “Uh, that’s… kinda unlikely.”

“Still risky,” I insist, my heart vibrating in my chest.

Duo shakes his head abruptly.  But he doesn’t throw me out of the house, either.

“How bad do you want me?”

Duo jerks.  Stares at me with wide eyes.  “I—” he stops and clears his throat.  “I don’t know if this is—”

“What if I guess?”

“Er.  Um, what if you do?”

“Are you going to lie to me about it?”

He bites his lip.  “…no.”

 _Carpe diem._ “A Preventer agent?”

He doesn’t say no.

“A former pilot?”

He bows his head.

“Gundam pilot?”

I can hear his molars grinding.

Turning, I mimic his pose and lean against the counter, putting my back to the garbage cans outside.

I look up at the ceiling.  It needs a coat of paint.

“You stopped guessing,” Duo murmurs.  He sounds disappointed.

Before I can talk myself into being a coward, I swing toward him, lifting a hand and trailing my fingertips over the curve of his shoulder.  Like I’m plucking a wayward strand of shed hair from his clothing.  It’s rare, but it does happen.  Sometimes.

I warn him, “I’m getting close.”

I think he’s holding his breath.

Pushing off of the counter, I close the distance between us.  His sleeve brushes the front of my dress shirt.  I check softly, “Too close?”

I wait.

I stand here and I wait for him to tell me I’ve got it wrong: I’m not the one he’ll never admit to wanting.

He exhales.  Inhales.  Pivots toward me.  Tilts his chin up.  “Closer,” he informs me decisively.

My pulse is roaring in my ears as I study the look in his eyes.  Oh, God.

Shifting until the buttons on our dress shirts are close enough to kiss, I admit to mine, “So you’re not a closet narcissist after all.”

I wait yet again.  See the comprehension flicker in his expression when it clicks: he’s the one I’d have coffee barefoot with.  He’s the one I want.  I check, just to be sure, “You don’t let people get close to you.”

“There’s one exception.”

Oh, God.

“But even then, it’ll be a lot of hard work.  High maintenance,” he cautions me.

I think about it.  I honestly think about it.  But I can’t come up with anything else I would rather do than build a life with him.

His patience thins along with his voice: “What—what do you think?”

I answer his soft, stumbling challenge with a smile.  “I think you’ve got yourself a new roommate.”

“BYOB?” he jokes, looking punch-drunk as he sways on his feet.  “I’ve got two rooms, but only one bed.  So far.”

Bring your own bed.

I’m smiling as I nudge a drooping lock of his soft hair aside to trace the shell of his ear with a fingertip.  His skin is velvety and warm.  I scrape my thumbnail over the edge of his jaw, judging how fast and thick his beard grows.  Faster than mine, but finer.  Both are issues I’ve been burning to investigate since he’d stomped into his first mission briefing, ignored Heero, nodded to Wufei, waved at Quatre, and sat next to me.  I still remember how our boots had knocked against each other as he’d irreverently twirled in his chair, and how our sleeves had brushed when he’d faced off with Quatre and slouched my way, and how he’d tilted his head back and smirked at me when he’d added a sarcastic addendum to our intrepid leader’s spiel.

When I’d felt my own lips twitch in an answering and equally sarcastic grin, I had sealed our fate as partners regardless of whether or not we worked in the same office.  But we had.  From that fateful day onward, we’d been assigned to work together.  Closely.

And now…

He shivers closer.  His hand grabs my arm, work-roughened fingers catching on the weave of my dress shirt and squeezing my bicep.  I resist the urge to flex-to-impress.  Barely.

“BYOB,” I repeat with a nod.  “I could do that.”  The bed is the only piece of furniture that hadn’t come with my apartment.

“Or you could just share—”

I lean down and interrupt him before he can finish that thought aloud.  I capture his lower lip between mine and tug gently.  He mewls, soft and surprised.  Pulling away, I growl against his slack lips, “Don’t jinx it.”

“So much optimism.  Where do you keep it all?”

“Right here on my sleeve.”  I shift my other arm, reaching for his waist and threading a finger through his belt loop.  “See?”

“Damn.  You really do, don’t you?”

I hum.

Duo thumps me in the chest with a fist.  “You asshole.  You’ve been hitting on me for almost a year and a half!”

Seventeen months, five days not including leap year.  But who’s counting?

I shrug.  “You had me at ‘bungalow’.”

“Shut up and kiss me already,” he laughingly orders, grabbing the back of my neck and pulling my mouth to his.  Our noses bump.  He chuckles low against my cheek, stirring my bangs and making them tickle the skin beneath my eye.  But then his hot tongue is coasting over my lower lip and I do as he says: I shut up and kiss him.

I should have done this months ago.

Of the two of us, who would have guessed that I’m the one who talks too much?

My fingers tighten on his waist and against his neck.  I resist the urge to pull him closer because—ooh, yes—it feels so much better when he presses into me of his own volition.  I approve with a quiet groan and his lips push at mine, nimble and needy.  I give ground and his tongue is suddenly, finally surging between my lips in a hot, slick rasp that paints every inch of my skin with heat.

I gasp.

Duo pushes me away from the counter and out of the room, licking at my mouth as he maneuvers me down the plastic-lined hall.  My back bumps against the door jamb outside the finished bedroom before I’m released.

My lips are tingling.

His eyes are sparkling,

“Priorities, hm?” I ask breathlessly as he kneels to tug my dress shoes off of my feet.

With a gamine grin, he braces his hands on my thighs.  Brands me through the fabric of my trousers.  “Yup.  Any complaints?”

“None.”  I brace a hand on the door frame above his head and lift my foot to slide a finger under the edge of my sock and scrunch it off.  Drop it inside the corresponding shoe.  Throughout, Duo watches me, his lips curved in a smirk.

“Your ten minutes were up forty-seven minutes ago,” I inform him, switching hands to deal with my other sock.

“You are so fucking pedantic.”

“Pedantic.  Really?”

“You aren’t?”  He arches a brow.  When he moves to stand, I make room for him, gripping the framing and leaning back.  Trapping him in my arms.  He grabs onto my elbows and proceeds to toe his feet free of footwear.

“I’m not arguing the point.  I’m impressed.”

“Huh,” he retorts playfully, “so that’s what that looks like.”

He steps on the toes of his socks and pulls his feet free one by one.  The socks are left to fend for themselves on the threshold.

“Yes,” I confirm.  “This is my ‘impressed’ face.”

“You realize that’s how you always look at me?”

“So it follows that…?”

He grabs my shirtfront and pulls me into the room.  The plush carpet squishes between my bare toes.  “I impress the hell outta you by just breathing.”

“That would be it, yes.”

“Tour first or skip right to the gift shop?”

I chuckle at the set-up.  I supply the punch-line: “Show me the goods, Maxwell.”

Warm hands press up my chest and measure my shoulders.  I cup his face as I sip and lap at his mouth.  He tastes incredible.  I want seconds, thirds, nine-hundred and sixty-fourths.

He fumbles through the small, white buttons on my shirt.  I tug the tails of his out of his navy trousers.  Buckles clink.  Zippers grit.  Belt-weighted slacks drop to the floor in wrinkled heaps.

I can’t stop kissing him.

Burrowing my hands beneath his white cotton undershirt, I groan again.  My little finger trails along the elastic band of his boxer shorts, measuring this narrow, never-before-seen strip of skin.

His mewl becomes a hot exhalation of “Oh, fuck” as he frees his lips from mine.

“Duo, more pl—oh _fuck.”_

He’s licking my neck and I may need some sort of divine intervention to keep my brain from frying to a crisp.

“Get on the bed, Barton,” he growls.  Growls.

“You should take me out on a date first.”

One hot, rough hand races up my spine against my skin, bunching my undershirt up and tugging the cotton taut across my belly.  “You think?”

“Yes, I do.”  Therefore, I am.  But I doubt Duo will appreciate a Cartesian reference right this moment.  If I am very lucky, he’ll give me plenty other openings to use it.

“How do you feel about copy room dates?”  The other hand slides up my thigh, fingers pushing beneath the edge of my briefs and brushing the curve of my ass.

I whimper.  “If that was your idea of a date, it was shit.”

“Noted.  I’ll owe you a good one, then.  Still, I did let you handle the stapler.”

His fingers leave a trail of simmering acid in their wake as they circle over my skin, around to the front of my thigh.  His palm presses against the bulge straining the crotch of my underwear.  My shout gets tangled up in my lungs and I pant brokenly against his neck.

“A show of trust if there ever was one.”  My grip spasms.

He laughs, lusty and delighted.  But then both his hands are on my waist and he’s leaning back to look me in the eyes.  “I trust you.”

I stare at him, throat locked and lungs burning.

Without a word, I sit down on the bed.  Toss my dress shirt aside and tug my undershirt off.

Duo watches as I lean back on my hands and make room for him to step up between my knees.  “Oh, God,” he breathes.  “Really?”

“We can play Thumb War to decide if you prefer?”

“Hell, no.  I just… actually, I’ve been trying really hard not to think about it.  This.  Any of this.”

I give him a look.  Arch my back.  Rock my hips once.  “Have I got your attention?”

He nods vigorously.

“Then you’d better be thinking about it now.”

He sways on his feet.  What little blood that hadn’t found its way to his arousal yet has no doubt just rushed there to back up the troops.  Hoo-rah.

His hands grip the hem of his dress shirt.  Fist in the fabric.

“Shit.  I don’t have any, um, anything.  Lube, condoms, I got nothing.”

“Then we’ll get some.  Later.”  His flushed and very hard cock is poking out of the leg of his boxers.  He’d dressed right today.  “Shut the door and come to bed.”

He does.

My mouth goes dry at the supple motion as he pulls his still-buttoned dress shirt and undershirt over his head with a sweep of his arm.

“You know your collar size?” I check, memorizing the way he looks standing between my thighs.  Anticipating how he’ll feel moving between them.

“Of course.  Don’t you?”

“Nope.  It’s up to you to make sure I don’t get our clothing piles confused.”

“Good to know.”  He leans over me with a saucy smirk.  His hands skim over my chest and I moan through my clenched teeth.  My head falls back.  Duo’s voice finds me, holds me steady.  “Oh, God.  Is this happening?  What do you want, Tro?  What can I do for you?”

I reach for his face, cradling his cheek and making sure he’s really listening before I say, “Anything you want.”

I’m not being vague or evasive.  What I’d just said is, without a doubt, exactly what I want.  I have more than enough fantasies of my own.  I want to know Duo’s.  That is the one fantasy I can’t provide for myself.  I want to feel how he wants me.

He hisses with shock.  Shoves his way out of his boxers.  Climbs onto me and my mind goes blank.  His skin and heat.  He smells so good.  His braid tickles the side of my rib cage and the feathery end brushes my hip.  His lips on mine.  His hands pressing my thighs further apart.  Fingers tugging at the bottom edge of my underwear.

“Get them off,” I hear myself rasp.

“Anything else?”

“Me.  Get me off.”

“You got it.”

My hips lift and his fists clench in the fabric.  Lift and tug.  I scoot back onto the bed properly.  Duo tosses my briefs over his shoulder, narrowly missing the ceiling fan.  And then he’s wrapping me up in his arms and my legs lock around his hips.  He mouths and sucks and kisses my neck, my collarbone, my chest.  I grab for his ass, rocking our arousals together in a slow, hard rub.

A breath bursts from his chest.  “Thought this was my show.”

“You missed your cue.”

 A hand slithers between us and he grips me as his hips surge and—oh, God.

“Found it.”

“Hng!”

His hand tugs on my shaft and I’m leaking with readiness.  I turn blindly toward him, scrape my teeth against his neck.  Grab him closer.  Hold him stronger.  Want him faster.

“Du-o,” I whisper, my breath hitching as he shifts his grip to rub our combined wetness.  I have never been harder in my life.

“Fuck.  Yes.  Gimme this, Tro.”

I grab the back of his neck, meet his gaze, let him see every moment of feeling.  This is what he does to me.  This.   _This._

And then—I suck in a breath to warn—no time—oh, _fuck...!_

Never so much heat in my life and he’s everywhere and I’m nowhere and oh—my—fucking—!

_God._

I don't think this is why he'd initially started calling himself “Shinigami.”  It’s working for him, though.

“Trowa!” he whines and I remember that I have a name.  A body.  I have lungs and they still work, miracle of miracles, and skin—

Oh, God. _Skin._  Duo is flushed and rubbing against me.  His breaths are stuttering through his slack, kiss-swollen lips and my hands are on his hips, groping over his ass, and I’m brushing the pad of one finger into the cleft at the base of his tailbone and he’s suddenly and inescapably—

Mine.

His release gushes across my belly, merging with the mess I’ve just made and I don’t care because I can feel the heat of his pleasure branding me and making him _mine._

I’m sure that logic is sound.

He crashes down against me.  I’m not ready to let him slide off and away, so I hold on.  I pet the shell of one ear — and then both of them — through his mussed hair and breathe him in and just... have him.

Gradually, his breaths stop whistling in his dry throat.  Water.  We’ll need a water dispenser in the bedroom.  I add it to the list I’ve started.  Right underneath the notation about a bedside linen cupboard and wall-mounted towel rack.

He shifts.  Licks the side of my neck.  Bites my jaw.

In my moment of flushed distraction, he slips from my arms.

“Two minutes, Tro,” he begs in response to my scowl.

He slides off of the bed, stands on shaky legs, and walks buck naked over to the door.  Stuffs his bare feet into his shoes and disappears down the hall.  I melt into the bed and I think of the privacy fence and I promise the ceiling fan, _Next time._

Life is good.

Thirty-three seconds later, he’s back with a pair of water bottles and no less than four hand towels.

It only takes one to wipe us off.

I sit up and crack open the cap on the water he’d passed me.  One gulp.  Two.  And then I ask, “Making up for lost time?”

He chuckles at the three unused towels.  “More like making up for reneging.”

“Who would dare such a thing?”

He muses with a thoughtful wince, “I seem to remember a certain someone offering to let me do anything I wanted.”

“Dangerous, that.”

“A promise is a promise.”

“Is a death wish.”

Duo’s hand cups my knee.  His thumb brushes over the skin of my inner thigh.  “If you can think of a better way to go, by all means, let’s hear it.”

“Neither one of us is going anywhere.”

He grins.  Leans over me.  Merges our mouths and sucks on my tongue and smiles when goose bumps flash over my chest and arms.  “Getting cold?”

I growl, “Just warming up.”

It’s actually pretty great living with the love of your life.  Especially when said love of your life knows exactly how you feel about him.

We keep the bungalow.  It takes eight months for it to be ready for a house-warming.  Duo is very distracting.  He blames me.  I blame the bedroom ceiling fan and everybody’s happy.

I keep my apartment and my bed stays in it.  Due to some non-fraternization nonsense or other in Preventer employment regulations, if I move in with Duo officially, I must stop working with him as my partner officially.  This officially pisses me off until Duo says, “You’re not far from the medical school campus.  Two words, lover boy.”

“Speak, schnookums.”

He smirks.  God do I love his smirk.  “Sub.  Let.”

So that’s what I do.  When I don’t point out that “sublet” is actually one word, Duo offers to give me a hand renovating the place.  I charge twice as much as I’d ever paid in rent and utilities.  The medical student’s rich parents happily pay.  The cash goes a long way towards renovating Duo’s next fixer-upper.

It’s fun to have more rooms to play in.  After the drop cloths go up over the windows, that is.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'd also like to recommend Crown_of_Winterthorne's "White Rabbits and Sealing Tape" for a delicious 2x3 AU (whose water bottles make a cameo appearance in this little fic of mine)
> 
> Oh, and the idea for Duo's hobby of house things is inspired by the Episode Zero manga, in which Duo and his gang live in an abandoned house before they all get kicked out and taken in by Father Maxwell. Everyone except for Duo gets placed in a permanent home and, presumably, adopted. After the umpteenth time Duo is sent back to the church, Father Maxwell figures this is God's way of saying he should keep the kid around. So, I can see this as a thing: Duo becoming super involved with something like Habitat for Humanity (which builds new houses for families in need... I don't think they renovate old ones, but I could be wrong).
> 
> A very special thanks to ExperienceComesFromBadJudgement for correcting my credit of the wrong philosopher! Descartes is credited with "I think, therefore I am."


End file.
